Are Municipal Entities Getting Social Media Message?

August 28, 2011 by

Are municipal entities around the country getting the message that social media plays an important role in communications during and after natural disasters?

My personal experience trying to get information about Long Beach Island (LBI) following Hurricane Irene where my in laws have a cottage makes me wonder. Only one island municipal entity, the Harvey Cedars Police Department, is on Twitter. None, except the Borough of Harvey Cedars, appear to be on Facebook.

As a result, most of the information about LBI on Twitter following the hurricane was from people who ignored the mandatory evacuation order to vacate the island. As I and others pressed these brave souls for information, I worried about encouraging them to continue putting themselves in danger. I also had concerns about believing and passing on their sometimes contradictory information.

If surveys have shown that almost 70 percent of Americans would turn to Twitter and Facebook for information in a crisis, why aren’t more municipal entities on them?

Good question!

What I know definitively is municipal entities can set up a Twitter account and Facebook page for free. There is a free Twitter chat every Friday from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. EST on the ins and outs of social media and emergency management using the #SMEMchat hashtag. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has posted useful information on using social media in emergency response on its website. There are also plenty of blogs, such as Crisis Comms Command Post, iDisaster 2.0, and Social Media 4 Emergency Management, providing free resources on how to use social media before, during and after a crisis.

Kudos to the Harvey Cedars Police Department for setting up and managing its Twitter account however it went out about it (without any obvious unnecessary time sinks). The information it provided following Hurricane Irene was a tremendous service to everyone who cares about the island—home owners, business people, tourists, and visitors to Harvey Cedars and the rest of the island alike.

Hopefully, more municipal entities around the country will follow the Harvey Cedars Police Department’s prudent example.

What lesson do you think we can learn from Hurricane Irene? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

Filed Under: Communications, Relief & Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Tweeting Libya’s ‘Digital Black Hole’ Revolution

August 22, 2011 by

“RT @mashable: Unconfirmed: Tweets Say Gaddafi Has Left Libya [BREAKING] – http://t.co/zOpe3NO,” read a surprising tweet flashing across my smart phone screen Saturday afternoon.

Since Mashable is a very reputable social media and technology blog, I immediately retweeted the message to my Twitter followers and began running searches to find out more about what was going on. Last January and February I’d followed the Revolution 2.0-powered uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt on Twitter and was excited about the possibility of sharing another historic moment electronically with people around the world.

Monitoring the Libyan rebels advance to Tripoli over the weekend, however, turned out to be much different. Fewer than 6 percent of Libyans are on the Internet (compared with 34 percent of people in Tunisia and 24 percent in Egypt) and DSL services have been largley blocked since the democratic uprising began in February.

Following unfolding events in a “digital black hole” was still riveting—but not the same. Here’s what following the tweets of the comparably few Libyans who had found a way to tweet eye-witness reports without Internet access was like for me:

  • Virtually no photos and video. Unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, Libyans were uploading very few photos and videos, so you didn’t get the up-close feel. Only late Sunday, when Internet services were briefly and suddenly restored in Tripoli, did some eye-witness photos and videos seem to be getting out.
  • Contradictory information. The steady stream of tweets and retweets emerging from Libyan sources painted a confusing, often contradictory picture of the evolving situation. Gaddafi had left the country, had suffered a heart attack, was flying to South Africa or Venezuela, and had been shot dead were among the many Twitter rumours that turned out to be wrong over the weekend. In comparison, at least in my own personal experience, the crowdsourced information coming out of Tunisia and Egypt on Twitter tended to be true.
  • Little conversation. The Twitterverse seemed to be following the events in Libya without the commentary and esprit de corps you experienced last winter. Perhaps, Andy Carvin’s absence from Twitter Saturday because he was picking up a new dog for his family put a damper on things? Perhaps, people were afraid of passing on troop positions or bad information? Perhaps, people were afraid the Tripoli advance would end badly with hundreds of thousands of people killed and brutal Gaddafi still in power?

Since Libya is pretty much a “digital black hole,” you can’t really call the rebellion there a Twitter or social media revolution. Twitter and text messages, however, were certainly a factor. It will be fascinating to see how events in Libya unfold and read more analysis on technology’s impact them. Stay tuned.

Do you think the events in Libya are partially a social media or technology revolution? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Communications, Relief & Development Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

‘I’m Gonna Be Your Friend’: A Model Campaign

August 9, 2011 by

I absolutely love Save the Children’s new social media campaign harnessing the power of celebrities and a Bob Marley song to raise funds for the devastating food crisis affecting millions of children and their families across East Africa.

The “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” campaign, which kicked off today, is named after the “I’m gonna be your friend” lyric in Marley’s 1973 song “High Tide Or Low Tide.” Using the moving song as the soundtrack to a YouTube video slide show of the crisis, the campaign inspires people to be a friend and act now.

What I love most about the “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” campaign is that it invokes deep empathy and connects the act of donating with tangible meaning and joy. All too often the desperate nature of humanitarian crises result in communications pieces invoking grief, guilt, or anger, which provoke paralysis, the opposite of what they were intended to do.

You can test for yourself the castrating effects of negative (lower emotion) messaging.

  1. Ask a partner to think of a joyful or peaceful experience while keeping his or her arm extended. After your partner focuses on the positive thought for a few seconds, push down on the arm. It should remain firm and strong.
  2. Now ask your partner to focus on a situation involving grief, guilt, or anger. After a few seconds, push down on the arm again. Most likely, your partner’s arm will be much easier to push down.

Weakening people emotionally and physically makes them feel powerless and overwhelmed. Many will just block you out, and a surprising few will take action, no matter how good the cause.

The other things I love about the “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” campaign are:

  1. Its simple call to action gives a sense of urgency.
  2. Its call to action is easy to act upon. Marley’s song is being sold on iTunes with all proceeds going to Save the Children. The uncluttered campaign website also prominently features click-through links for direct donations to Save the Children’s East Africa appeal.
  3. The amazing array of celebrities lined up to disseminate “I’m Gonna Be Your Friend” campaign call to action worldwide.

While the campaign is just beginning, I predict it will be a case study in framing tough issues in an inspiring, meaningful, and easily actionable way.

What do you think about Save the Children’s campaign? Tell me about it in the comments.

Filed Under: Causes, Communications, Relief & Development Tagged With: , , , ,

Video Clip of the Month: Drought & Filter Bubbles

August 1, 2011 by

With East Africa facing its worst drought in 60 years, I wince more than ever at a quote by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg: “A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”

What Zuckerberg’s assertion means on a societal level—such as during a regional famine overseas—is the topic of my August 2011 video clip of the month. It features Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, giving a TED talk on the unintended consequences of web companies tailoring search results to our personal tastes.

“[Personalization] moves us very quickly toward a world in which the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see but not necessarily what we need to see. As Eric Schmidt [of Google] said, ‘It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them,'” he says.

Pariser argues the growing array of personalizing filters could ultimately prove to be bad for us, bad for democracy, and bad for humanity. But he ends on a positive note. He says just as journalistic ethics improved in the early 1900s to better inform us over the last century, algorithmic ethics could improve to help guide us through the next.

Anyone who cares about the future of democracy and humanity should definitely watch this video.

Your turn! Do you think things like homelessness or genocide, which are not highly clickable, should disappear from search results?

Filed Under: Relief & Development, Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

HOW TO: Reach Your Audience with Text Messages

July 28, 2011 by

Sending a text message is almost the only way you can be sure your target audience actually reads your message. An amazing 97 percent of mobile subscribers will read an SMS message within four minutes of receipt. But only 20 percent of listserv e-mails, depending on your industry, are ever opened at all.

Here are six steps organizations of any size can use to add text messages to their communications mix:

1. Choose a text message delivery system. While there are many commercial applications out there, FrontlineSMS is free open-source software you can use to turn any computer and mobile phone or modem into a two-way group messaging hub. You don’t even need to be hooked up to the Internet.

2. Gain permission. Don’t just start blasting out text messages without giving your audience members a chance to let you know how best to serve them. Not only is sending unsolicited text messages illegal in most countries, many people would find them annoying. Many big companies, such as IKEA (see number 9), are giving customers several communications options.

3. Look for contact points. Determine what opportunities you have to collect cell phone numbers from your audience. Your website? Conferences? Phone calls? Figure out how to give people an easy way to sign up for more information via text message (or email or both) on the spot.

4. Get relevant details from start. As you grow your text message list, remember to collect enough information to treat each person special (and avoid sending anybody useless information). This means creating a general text message list and several sublists tailored to different interests/audience segments within your industry.

5. Deliver great content. People who agree to share their precious mobile digits with you do so under an assumption of trust. Don’t sent them too many messages. Also, stay clear of texting shorthand. Use full words in complete sentences.

6. Track results. Be sure to compare the effectiveness of different text messages, so you can keep improving how you serve your audience over time.

That’s my list. What about you? Do you think I left out anything essential to reaching your audience with text messages?

Filed Under: Communications, How to, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,